the beginning of us.

when i was younger, i wanted to have everything. i didn't dream of getting married. i never had boyfriends or a binder full of baby names. but i did have a vision. dreams of my life to come included an apartment in the city. a busy, high-powered job, and dinners delivered to me late at night. it's what i wanted, or at least, what i thought i wanted.

when i was a freshman in college, i met matt. i remember the first time i spoke with him. i was sitting on the floor of a bustling south hall lobby playing euchre with my posse. he came in with his then girlfriend. she kindly introduced me to this tall, lanky boy wearing a green spartans hat. it was just a moment. nothing special. i took note of him only because his girlfriend was a friend and she lived directly across the hall from me and so i figured i would see him pretty regularly.

throughout his first couple of years, matt dated a hand full of other girls within my circle of friends (one of my very best friends in fact!) but still, i never really noticed him and i am certain the same was true for him about me.

until junior year that is. matt and i were both hired as resident assistants. matt and i did our first 'in-duty' (a security funtion where we had to patrol the campus together for hours on a roatting basis) together in january of that year. he had recently become single and talked with me all night about what he was looking for. together, while on a break, we sat in my dark living room; i remember almost everything about those minutes. our chirstmas lights provided the dim glow of a guy in a baseball hat who was sad and a little lost. the way that matt was able to talk about what he wanted from his life and from his future wife was so honest. for the first time, he made it safe for me to think about what i wanted for myself too. over the course of those four hours, i literally fell in love with him. when our shift was over, i went home, and told my roommate that if i ever got married, it would be to him.

we remained close friends throughout the next year...but still only friends (sigh). in january of our senior year, we took a road trip to geneva college where we were both considering for graduate school. i was as giddy as a school girl getting to spend so much time alone with someone i just adored. after three days in pennsylvania had passed, it was time to head home. we loaded up in his black grand am and began our 6 hour drive back to chicago. about an hour in, for whatever reason, the wipers on matt's car stopped working. the temp outside could not have been above 15 degrees and the dirt and sand that the trucks were kicking up at the windshield coated the glass making it nearly impossible to see out of. i suggested numerous (brilliant) solutions, but matt remained steadfast. that is to say, he was disinterested in remedying the problem, but would have rather have driven home behind the cataracts of a filthy windshield than listen to me about how to fix it.

i was irritated. he was irritated. we were in a fight. (our first!)

after about an hour (of dodging semi trucks and searching for clean spots), matt stopped at a gas station and somehow, fixed the wipers. more importantly, he apologized. (his first!) and i melted. it struck me that he cared that i was upset. and it got me thinking...maybe.

as we got closer to home, i was feeling sad. maybe it was because matt was talking about an ex-girlfriend and the possibility of him meeting and marrying a girl in pennsylvania (i could have killed him....can you imagine?). maybe because i was quiet (i am usually not quiet) or maybe he had the same realization that i had but matt was quiet too. as this trip sped toward its end, i realized that if we didn't have the ol' DTR (define the relationship) discussion before we got home, it was never going to happen.

just then i said 'do you every think we have a weird relationship?' without hesitating, he said 'do you think it's weird that we have never dated?' almost before he could finish his sentence, i blurted 'YES!'. and with that, matt said the words that changed our lives... 'shannon whalen, would you like to go on a date with me?'

i am not exaggerating when i say that in the moment i said yes to a date, i knew that we would end up married. eight months later we were engaged, and 10 months after that, i became matt's wife.

in those pivotal moments, when our choices were laid out in front of us and we could have gone in one of many directions, matt and i decided to go it together.

as i fell in love with matt, gone from my dreams were fancy apartments in the city, late night delivery and a high powered anything. it became clear that i wanted a life with him, no matter what. when we were 21, we never could have imagined what our life together would hold. from infertility, to our mid-west moves, to a busy life with four children. never never never could i have imagined what we have today.

i am beyond blessed. i love my husband and i adore my children. no matter where the road takes us, we have each other and that's everything.